FEMA Approves Disaster Funding

January 1, 2010

Alabama Governor Bob Riley on Thursday received approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster aid for Alabama counties affected by severe storms and flooding December 12-18. Counties included in this declaration are Escambia, Barbour, Butler, Clarke, Coffee, Conecuh, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Pike.

Federal funding is available to state and eligible local governments and certain nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by these storms. Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures for all counties and tribes within the state.

Preliminary dollar figures for flood damage in Escambia County, Alabama, show damage to public property as follows:

* Escambia County (Ala.), $3 million
* City of Atmore, $1.25 million
* City of Brewton, $400,000
* Town of Flomaton, $362,000
* Poarch Creek Indians, $250,000
* Escambia (Ala.) Sheriff’s Dept., $38,000

Application procedures for local governments will be explained at a series of federal/state applicant briefings with locations to be announced in the affected area by recovery officials. Approved public repair projects are paid through the state from funding provided by FEMA and other participating federal agencies.

For further information contact the Escambia County Office of Emergency Management at (251) 867-0232.

Comments

One Response to “FEMA Approves Disaster Funding”

  1. Loren Westman on February 9th, 2010 9:54 am

    My wife and I was living in our 5th wheel on Little Escambia Creek and developing the property because we were running low on our savings account. It starts about 1/4 mile from the 4 lane bridges on highway 31 about 3 miles east of Flomaton. I traded the truck to pull the trailer with for the land and had no way to pull the it out. Were not from here and didn’t know the property flooded as much as it did. There was no sellers discloser list like they have in Texas and most other states, so we didn’t know that it flooded that much. My wife is from Singapore and we were on vacation there when the flooding happened. My wife is almost 60 and I’m 61 and we had to rent a place here in Pace, Florida for $550.00 per month now, because the trailer that I paid $21,500,00 for about 1 1/2 years earlier, is perty much a complete loss and I’m not sure we can even get our money back on the property. The laws in Alabama have to be changed on this matter so some unsuspecting people like us don’t lose everything we worked for all our life. President Obama said things have to change because this is the new age. This (buyer beware policy) has to become a thing of the past. Buyers can’t be expected to get a survey and higher a laywer to look into things befor they buy some property. What if they find descrepencies and don’t buy the land, like us. We would have lost 3 or 4 thousand dollars that we couldn’t afford to lose. I had a surveyer come and show us about where the north property line was befor we put earnest money down and after it was surveyed the north property line was about 200ft off of what the surveyor said. We lost a lot of road frontage because of this and now I own a bunch of water and a sand bar that I can’t even walk to on my own land. We bought it anyway because I had put $10,000.00 earnest money down and also we were paying $420 per month to stay in a RV Park. I can’t sleep very good because of all this, because our future became uncertain now. I was wondering what we can do?

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News